Tasting Tour Totals the Treat Tasters (say that five times fast!)

It was back to school today but I don't really think you could call what I did today school because all it really was was eating. I mean, there was walking and talking in between the eating but mostly the 15 of us and our chef just stuffed our chubby cheeks full of not diabetic-friendly sweets ALL afternoon. I'm seriously so full of sugar that I can barely type this blog but to appease my faithful readers (who I thought of today when taking pictures of everything so as y'all could feel like you came along without the calories) I will make an attempt to fight through the cloudy-ness of the food coma and take y'all on a tasting tour of Manhattan.

The first stop that we made was at a lovely bakery in Tribeca called Tribeca Treats. The bakery is owned and operated by a lady who went to the very same un-named culinary school that I am attending and is really delightful. Her space is beautiful and while I personally found her cupcakes to be a little dry, I loved her concept and I thought she had a lot of really great advice for us young(ish) students. At Tribeca Treats I tasted a chocolate cupcake with raspberry frosting and the best part of it was how not overly sweet the icing was and how delightfully the cupcake was presented.


See?!

Next, we went to Marie Belle, a chocolate store. Now, I must admit, the store was lovely. It was chic and it was pretty and it was ridiculously overpriced. We each tasted a single chocolate, the flavour I chose was cinnamon. It was very delicious and had a custom-designed, silk screened little emblem on top of the one-inch square chocolate but though it was perty, it wasn't worth $2.50.


A One-Inch Square Cinnamon Chocolate from Marie Belle

After Marie Belle, we trekked over to a tiny little chocolate store called Kee's Chocolates. It wasn't much to look at but the chocolates were delightful and so was the staff. Unlike Marie Belle, a "brand" that is sold all over the world, Kee's has just two locations in New York and doesn't do any wholesale. They make everything on site and use no preservatives. The chocolates were also wonderfully subtle and tasty.


Pistachio Truffle from Kee's Chocolates

Thank the Lord that we went to Grandaisy Bakery after Kee's because at this point, we needed something savory and boy did Grandaisy deliver. This bakery, which was once co-owned by Mr. No Knead Bread, smelled hideous. I've been in enough barns to know the smell of mice and this bakery stunk of them. The staff were a little unhelpful and the store was totally uninviting but the Roman-style pizza that we had was very tasty. Our group tasted roasted cauliflower, pomodoro (tomato sauce), zucchini, mushroom and potato flat breads and they all quite good despite the fact that they were served intentionally cold...


Cauliflower Roman Flat bread from Grandaisy Bakery

Pleasantly full by this time, our group strolled over to a Bakery/Cafe/Bar in the West Village called Sweet Revenge. At this bakery, they serve cupcakes, have a breakfast till dessert menu and also operate a bar -- there is a lot going on. What is neat about Sweet Revenge is that they have wine/beer/spirit parings with all their extremely large, dense, and full of icing cupcakes. While we didn't try the paring (it was only 2:30 in the afternoon...) our group did taste four cupcakes: the Dirty (a festival of chocolate), the Crimson and Cream (red velvet with cream cheese frosting), the Pure (vanilla cake and frosting) and a Sweet Revenge (peanut butter cake filled with ganache and topped with peanut butter frosting). They were all very big and very rich and very dry but it was a very neat concept to see in action.


A box full of Sweet Revenge Cupcakes

Now, I must be honest with y'all, my faithful readers and tell you that we did make two more stops after Sweet Revenge but blogger.com will not allow me to load any more pictures and my tummy cannot process any more writing about food. I will share that we also went to Bouchon Bakery at Columbus Circle where I tasted a Florentine and we went to Madeleine Patisserie where our class sampled a half dozen (of what I believe is the city's best) French Macaroons. After all our tasting and walking, we were all thoroughly stuffed and tired but I think we had a fun-filled day of getting to know each other outside of the classroom and also a day of learning a little but more about the industry of pastry arts. Hopefully today's blog inspires you to take a tasting tour where you live and doesn't just make you tired and hungry! Toodles till tomorrow!